Hunts and Trains; please fix the Hunts!

[Cursix]

I don't normally complain but I felt something needed to be said. A hunt train was just called in my world; there was so many players participating in the hunt that the A ranks would not render for me half the time and trying to teleport to the next aetheryte often got aborted with an error for "Congestion". Sadly a good number of folks running the trains were not only from other worlds, but also saying in chat that the Trains are going as fast as they can and will not wait for no one, even those having loading/server issues. "No time to wait on slow ppl" was one thing that was said.

I know its a back and forth thing if those in other worlds should be able to go to another world and participate in the hunt. There are pros and cons overall, but right now with the new content and obvious counter measures deployed by SE already like instanced Areas like Lakeland, there should be at least a temporary restriction on the hunts if there is nothing technical that can be done to fix these issues. It is not fair to the residence of a world that they cannot participate and get credit on their own hunts and the attitude of some players that won't show courtesy to others just makes it worse.

There could be other solutions to try and mitigate the massive surges that these trains cause; perhaps decreasing the spawn time of the A ranks at a minimum to reduce the need for the trains in the first place or provide alternative ways of getting hunts. I don't know what else can be done on the technical side of things, but giving the history such as restricting access to the firment, SE should look at least look at a temporary restriction.

[Oichi]

Well, there are also things that can be done on our side while the madness lasts. In Aether, most ShB A trains are announced for all servers (discord and CWLS) in the USA mornings, while during USA peak times most conductors announce trains only on their server to reduce congestion. Also, most conductors are calling out the zone aetherite first, then wait there a bit for everyone to load in, then call out the mark flag. That is very thoughtful and helps a ton.

[Canadane]

Also, most conductors are calling out the zone aetherite first, then wait there a bit for everyone to load in, then call out the mark flag. That is very thoughtful and helps a ton.

This is what's causing a lot of the congestion.
You wait long enough people from the other servers do come over, which is fine, but eventually too many come over.
And you can end up having so many by the time you change instances or zones you may lock out some people from their own server.

It's not going to last forever as people stop using hunts or just patch players stop playing after a while. But it's fairly annoying the speed of the trains have been reduced at the compromise of people being able to load in.
But hey, I'm not conducting anything so I'm not going to press the issue much.

[Liam_Harper]

From experience the zone lets you in after 30 sec at most or so. Calling the aetheryte first gives everyone that bit of time to get in and barely extends the train more than a few minutes or so.

Either way, they got impatient and stopped calling aetherytes first on Light DC. I'm not sure why you'd take the time to scout a train, announce it on all your linkshells and share it with the community, then not let half of them in, but train conductor sets the rules so I'm not complaining.

[Catwho]

The congestion right now is primarily caused by the Crystarium upgrade items finally being available from hunt marks. It's gonna be like this for a while until everyone has upgraded what gear they can. (Pro tip: Use your Nier raid coins to upgrade left side gear first, and the hunt nuts for right side first, because the left side items cost 1000 nuts more. Once a week nier raid coins save you 3000 nuts.)

[Infindox]

It's been like this since World Visit was implemented. When something new comes out (like gear upgrades with nuts) the trains become overcrowded again and stop for no one. I'm not sure what they CAN do about it but I do kinda miss the old times when the hunting community was more then just hop on the train and hope you hit it.

[Vahlnir]

Cross world hunts were a mistake, in my opinion. Way too many people in an area at once. If we had a more efficient way to filter who we see I suppose it'd be one thing, but we don't. A lot of MMOs have a setting that lets you choose the number of players you can see at any given time like 12, 20, 50, etc. FF XIV would benefit from such a feature, I think.

[Liam_Harper]

Problem with calling the Aetheryte first is that you leave the train stuck right at the Aetheryte, causing congestion at that location and preventing players from loading in.

Ah, is the congestion localized? I always assumed it was a zone-wide limit, that explains a lot. In that case fair enough.

The conductors are generally doing a great job keeping a steady stream of trains going, whichever system they use, so props for that.

Cross world hunts were a mistake, in my opinion.

Agreed.

[Jojoya]

Ah, is the congestion localized? I always assumed it was a zone-wide limit, that explains a lot. In that case fair enough.

The conductors are generally doing a great job keeping a steady stream of trains going, whichever system they use, so props for that.



Agreed.

There's both, the zone wide limit of 300 but also the congestion right at the Aetheryte. Too many players sitting at the Aetheryte and the game won't allow more to load in until some move away. I had that happen a couple of times the other night with a relatively small train (about 70) when I delayed to Raise people. I had to wait several seconds before I could teleport and there were some other players waiting with me.

I don't have any problem with the cross world hunts in general. It gives players more flexibility in when they do the content, which is a plus for the community in my opinion. Get delayed in traffic coming home from work and miss your world's train by 15 minutes? Join the train on another world instead of being out of luck for the day.

What's missing is a throttle on the rewards. It's just too lucrative to pass up an opportunity to chain trains across a data center for the rewards. That only serves to add to the congestion, especially with many streamers encouraging their followers to join the trains. Every time we run 2-3 trains at the same time to try to split the load and ease the congestion per world, we get a bunch of complaints from those who wanted the rewards from every train.

The OP is right. It's not a problem that's going to go away without changing how the Hunt works. We'll see it ebb and flow with the patch cycles.

But if SE does change things, I think the community will end up even more unhappy. SE doesn't like the trains (cross world hunts may even have been set up in the hopes that search and destroy groups would break the trains). If they do make changes, it's going to be either to break up the ability to run trains or to greatly reduce the reward potential.

[Tlamila]

Like others said, it's just a temporary thing, gotta deal with it. It will go back to normal soon.
As for hunts being fun? Actually they are for me, this week I've only done hunts and 0 expert roulette. Usually I prioritize roulette cause I can do it anytime while for trains I need to wait for one to be conducted, but lately so many are going on that I always find one.

Cross world hunts were a mistake, in my opinion. Way too many people in an area at once. If we had a more efficient way to filter who we see I suppose it'd be one thing, but we don't. A lot of MMOs have a setting that lets you choose the number of players you can see at any given time like 12, 20, 50, etc. FF XIV would benefit from such a feature, I think.

Uh there actually is an option where you can limit the number of players you see to max of 30, I always have it on.